Friday, September 30, 2016

The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) accounts for around 40 per cent of everything the EU spends.

Single area payments are paid to landowners, proportionate to the area of land they own. So the payments are not subsidising food production or stewardship, but land ownership. Therefore, the person who owns the most land gets the most subsidy.

The top 100 recipients get more in subsidies than the bottom 55,000 put together. And of those top 100: 16 are on the Sunday Times Rich List, one in five are members of the British aristocracy, including high-profile figures such as the late Duke of Westminster (who was one of the wealthiest men in Britain), the Queen and Lord Iveagh of the Guinness family, and many others are multi-millionaires who use the land in ways that simply can’t be described as producing a public good